At 19:00 on Tuesday, September 21, 2021, in the premises of the National Historical Museum in Tirana, was opened the photo exhibition with portraits, "The Anatomy of the Image" (The Anatomy of the Image), author Edvin Çelo. This exhibition was attended by artists from various fields, representatives of state institutions, representatives of religious institutions, colleagues of the author and lovers of photography, etc. The curator of the exhibition was Vladimir Myrtezai-Grosha. In this exhibition, portraits of famous personalities in various fields were presented, among them, that of the Bektashi World Leader, Haxhi Dede Edmond Brahimaj. The ceremony was opened by Dr. Dorian Koçi, Director of the National Historical Museum. For the attendees, an introductory picture of the exhibition was prepared by the curator Vladimir Myrtezai-Grosha. Here is part of this presentation: “To photograph time is a mission that has to do with a special process and a long journey to turn the fixed moment from a temporal element into an evocative stop, where the photographic content comes as a substratum of retelling through the art of observation. As in all travels of the mind, photography is a follow-up to the first encounters which conveys his observation through cultural parallels and the journey over the shoulders of a course of tradition. But not everyone arrives at a destination to transmit their time, as not everyone has the ability to present this act of stopping the existence of matter through the image as a stopped time that seeks to stop qualitatively.
Edvin Çelo plows the path on a traditional almost kissing path as a reference system in the language of photography, traveling through an extended photography process to bring back in more detail the volumes in front of his camera. This is an operational technical manipulation on a set of portraits; these entities are influential and mass-clicked people. The selected module of Çelos is an efficient window where through a subjective selection they find the appearance of a series of eclectic characters.
His choice often resembles a kind of attraction that is not always about content, but about liking and disliking based on a complex emotional equation. When the character is chosen, Edvin Çelo operates through a deeply rigorous module where the character completes his journey to reveal to us all the character changes of the subject.
Çelo, with a high artistic ambition and knowing very well the technical possibilities of the genre, expands his research similar to a stratigraphic journey, stripping each individual of the routine formulas of public manipulation as content, and passing it on another plane, in direct confrontation with its penetrating target. The review of light by Celo at molecular density is experienced in the mind of the artist similar to a process of reconstruction from the beginning of everything. The picture comes to the final stage as a dialogue with the subject, almost like a word-for-word whitening taken during a well thought out interview. This approach offered by the author brings to light with an artistic fanaticism a host of rigorous procedures that through his search and touch become apparent. Çelo undertakes a photographic journey that from the point of view of workload would resemble concrete literature as a narrative of revision.
The cycle selected by Edvin Çelo is found in a mobile perpetuum, attempting a detailed scan of time that the author deliberately left open as an endless project. Taking this attitude Çelo creates the possibility that this flow in its form of development loses the programmed outline of the photographic act, and is transformed into a complementary element of a cartography of the creative mind of the artist, denying a mere exposure of tradition in favor of the highest classical form of portrait vintage.
Çelo's project is based on an open image frame where the psychological trance makes its journey. Çelo not only tries to detect light but also follows the psychosis of each character, being the ones who, after some time in front of the camera, relax and offer themselves to be detected in front of the lens. All subjects are stripped under this optics and marked as graphic volumes where the difference is made directly by the anthropology of form, without the play with the effects of sudden and variable lighting.
In the artist's portfolio we find a volume of photographic creations as a master of drawing techniques through light across its spectrum and capturing superimposed transitional states reinforced even with linguistic references. Çelo knows very well the layout, and the gravity of the compositional elements. It unfolds a skill that transcends the simple, free eye of a photograph, reaching an artistic level of a primordial valence. re.
Edvin Çelo has an organic connection with photography, surpassing the formal demand that the medium offers, due to his penetrating observation that translates into surprising alternative propositions with a tried and tested visual language and depth that abandon realism in an endless search for the spiritual.
In the end, the author thanked the many presenters and participants present at this event.
Prepared by:
Nuri ÇUNI
Kujtim BORIÇI
Photos: Nuri ÇUMANI
